


Put That Cookie Down .... Now!

by snugglesnacks



Category: Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02
Genre: F/M, Gen, One Shot, Post-Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna (Movie), Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27871441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snugglesnacks/pseuds/snugglesnacks
Summary: Post-Kizuna, One-shot. Slight AU where they have figured out the whole Disappearing Partner Thing. The Adventure ladies get together for a Valentine's Day baking reunion, which has unfortunate implications for certain other members. Suspicion, deception, and a forsaken cookie. Girls can be so cruel. Light Sora/Yamato, Mimi/Koushiro, and heavier Miyako/Ken.
Relationships: Ichijouji Ken/Inoue Miyako | Yolei Inoue, Ishida Yamato | Matt Ishida/Takenouchi Sora, Izumi Koushirou | Izzy Izumi/Tachikawa Mimi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Put That Cookie Down .... Now!

**Author's Note:**

> Why, yes, you fine person of culture, the title IS a Jingle All the Way reference!
> 
> This is my first ever published fanfic. I decided that if some people could pump out a novel during NaNoWriMo, I could at least squeak out a measly one-shot of my favourite characters in my favourite fandom. This started as a simple premise in my head and became a sort of character study of all the girls, more or less, as they've grown into becoming young women. I hope you like it! Please drop me a message in the comments if you have time!

“Hikari! _Hi_! So good to see you!” Mimi’s face beamed at the young woman standing at the apartment entrance balcony in the waning daylight. She stepped forward to give her a brief hug, then back into the entranceway, making way for her to enter. Hikari, dressed in a light pull-over sweater and matching tights appropriate for the cool Tokyo weather, softly stepped inside and took off her beret. It was a long time since she had seen Mimi, due to the older woman’s penchant for taking long trips overseas to increasingly exotic locations. You never knew when she was in the country, until she was, and blowing up the chat with an invitation to some sort of party -- like the Girls’ Night Valentine Get-together, announced two days ago. _No boys allowed,_ she had teased. _Not even Takeru._

Hikari craned her neck around the entrance to peer into the airy loft, one that Mimi’s father had bought for her in her first year of university. It was just as charming as usual, looking out onto the trendy district of Kichijouji. A bit empty, owing to Mimi’s nomadic lifestyle. Recently half-unpacked pieces of luggage dotted the apartment, as if to emphasize the point. A few potted plants lay dormant in the corners. It was the one thing Mimi said she couldn’t live without – plants. “How else would I survive when I don’t have dear Palmon beside me?” she had said, flabbergasted, when Jou accidentally sat on one and complained about the lack of seating at a party long past. Hikari smiled at the memory. She didn’t see Jou often enough, either.

“How do those things even survive?” Hikari giggled, gesturing with her head to the vegetation, before she rounded the corner to the kitchen table, cradling her baking supplies. Miyako and Sora were already seated, cookie paraphernalia splayed out before them, with an uncorked wine bottle sitting expectant in the table corner. At seeing the younger woman’s still-rosy face, Sora got up to give Hikari a hug, and cleared a space for her to put down her bag. Miyako took a glass and poured a generous helping of what had probably been the cheapest Pinot Grigio on the convenience store shelf, and slid it toward Hikari with a grin.

“Hey, beautiful,” she flirted, with a wink. Hikari laughed and sat down beside her. If there was one thing she could count on, it was Miyako being Miyako. “We were just getting ready to carve up these bad boys.” She gestured to the stack of cookies sitting in a tin in front of Sora, who began carefully removing them. “Can you believe Sora stayed up until 1 AM last night baking these? I would have hit up 7-Eleven for a pack of plain cookies while I was getting my _bento_ and called it a night.”

“I can totally believe that, and it doesn’t surprise me,” said Hikari, integrating her supplies into the assortment.

“It wasn’t that late.” Sora dismissed Miyako’s statement, carefully measuring some icing sugar and dumping it into a bowl. “I was catching up on _Terrace House_ at the same time, so it wasn’t any loss.”

“Oh my _god_ , have you seen the new season though?” Mimi jumped in, rolling a suitcase past the table and into the kitchen. “That show was always a hot mess, but this season is next-level. Like truly Numemon’s poop quality.” The girls slowed their activity at the table to follow Mimi’s movements behind them into the kitchen. They waited as she seemingly struggled to slowly unzip the bag, its contents obscured by the counter. There was a great degree of rustling, some clanking, and a small yelp as she extricated something stubborn. After a time, she stood back up again and placed a small brown bottle with a red label on the counter with a small _clink_.

Hikari laughed. “I thought you were digging out something gigantic.”

“Or useful,” added Miyako. “Like a cookie-decorating machine.”

“Hm, if you wanted a cookie-decorator machine, maybe you should have engineered one and brought it yourself,” responded Mimi.

“That’s not – “

“If you must know,” she drawled, cutting off Miyako’s retort, “this is my _secret ingredient_.” She finished the sentence with a whisper, looking scandalous. The girls stared.

“Is this like your ‘secret ingredient’ from that Halloween party?” Sora asked, half-smiling-half-grimacing. “The ‘health flour’ in the chocolate cake that gave everyone stomach trouble for a week?”

“I _told_ you I didn’t know that it had that effect on people who weren’t also on a kosher-vegan diet.”

“Or the hot sauce that sent Taichi to the emergency room two years ago?” Hikari followed up un-innocently.

“OK, _again,_ the guy who sold me that stuff didn’t tell me it was illegal in Japan.”

“How about the ‘special liqueur’ from Guatemala you used in the punch last Christmas, that Koushirou had to dump out because he happened to read the bottle and found out one of the listed ingredients was ‘chloroform’?”

Mimi stood rigid, and shot Miyako an icy-cold stare. “Actually, it was from the _Galapagos Islands_ , Miyako. And the nice old man who sold it to me didn’t look like he was capable of murder. So I still think that Koushirou’s full of shit, and can’t read basic English.” She had opened a drawer, took out a teaspoon, and shut it with a slam. The girls jumped. She grabbed the bottle, strode over to the icing mixture Sora had whipped together, and transferred the transparent liquid from the bottle, to the teaspoon, to the bowl, in one swift motion. Sora grabbed for the bowl, too late to realize what Mimi was doing. Her hands froze in mid-air, then resigned themselves to resting gently at the sides.

“What exactly was that, Mimi?” she asked, completely devoid of energy. Her darting eyes indicated that she had started to mentally calculate whether she had enough ingredients to make a new batch.

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” Mimi smiled, with a wink. “Let’s get this party started!”

* * *

Two bottles of wine and a round of shots of purple stuff from the back of Mimi’s liquor cabinet later, the fine ladies of the Original Chosen Children were, in a word, wasted.

“This is so much fun, Mimi. We should do this more ofte- _hic_!” slurred Miyako, smearing her icing on the fifth attempt to make a flower-covered cookie. “Oh, crackers.”

Hikari dissolved into giggles.

“Have you even made one decent cookie, Miyako? What are you going to give to Ken?” She finished a lopsided dotted design with a shaky hand, then cocked her head to the side and carefully analyzed it with one eye clenched shut. “This one … is for Taichi.”

“Well you better tell Taichi to re-join soccer club, because he’s getting my rejects, too,” added Sora. Her finished cookies were neatly lined up for the icing to harden, each a different variation on a flower design. A few with uneven blotches of colour were stacked to the side – the Taichi pile, presumably. “He’s got of a lot of calories to run off in his future.”

“If Taichi’s getting the flops, then I wonder who’s getting the greatest hits, _hmmm_?” Mimi teased from below the table. About halfway through the session she had migrated to the floor with a stack of cookies and never quite came back up. She had not taken any decorating supplies with her.

“’That’s for me to know and you to find out’,” Sora imitated the sing-song delivery, and flicked some icing onto the younger girl’s head. Mimi yelped and haphazardly waved her hand around above the table surface, protecting her from any further sugary onsloughts. “Hey! I just got this hair colour done and I can’t wash it for two days!”

“I always thought you should try purple,” Sora giggled, clearly unremorseful.

“Agreed!” yelled Miyako from across the table, in the midst of thoroughly butchering her eighth cookie. “I think he’ll like this one. It’s very _wabi-sabi_.” Mimi rose up from behind her, craning her neck to consider the abomination. There was a pause.

“Uh, I think it’s officially past _wabi-sabi,_ girlfriend. You’ve officially entered cursed territory.”

Hikari leaned over and her eyes became wide. She covered the bottom half of her face with her hands as the corners of her mouth rose in gleeful terror. “Miyako … that is straight-up _horrible._ ”

“Oh, come on, it’s not that bad,” Miyako reasoned, turning the desecrated confection in her hands. A glob of blue-gray icing slowly slid down and off the cookie, landing with a dull _plop_ on the table surface.

“Miyako, honey, no,” Mimi soothed. “You cannot give that to Ken. That is not fit for human consumption.”

“You guys are such drama queens,” tutted Sora, approaching from the other side. “If it’s so awful, you can add it to the Taichi pile, or I’m sure Hawkmon would appreciate i - _oh, dear God, what have you done.”_ Mimi tried to grab at it in a calculated strike, but Miyako thrust her creation in the opposite direction. A direction from which came the distinct _click_ of a smartphone shutter.

“You-!” Miyako wheeled around and hissed, as Hikari elatedly tapped at her cell-phone, all attempts to hide her mirth abandoned. “Don’t you _dare_ send it to Takeru,” she snarled, and launched herself at her Jogress partner’s right hand to intercept the inevitable social media firestorm. Hikari dodged, feinted, and flew to the couch to complete her transmission. Miyako tore behind her, leapt into the air with both feet and landed on top of Hikari, who let out a surprised squeal. Miyako’s hands roved for hair, or, failing that, an exposed area of flesh to tickle. She had three siblings and wasn’t above playing dirty.

Then, to everyone’s complete surprise, there was knock at the door, shortly followed by the appearance of a young blond man making his entrance.

“Hey, Mimi? Sorry to come in, but you weren’t answering your _oh sweet Jesus what the actual hell?!_ ” In a rare display of embarrassment, Yamato reeled around to face the door, covering his crimson face with his hands. “Sorry! It’s! Uh! _Mybad_! I’m! Going now!”

“Yamato!” He felt someone grab his arm just as he had opened the door to flee the scene and run to the nearest shrine, where he planned to pray that he would never be haunted by the vision of the two women on top of each other on the couch in the future, especially late at night after several drinks.

He turned to face his captor, slightly, but not enough to witness any more sin. It was Sora. Of course it had to be Sora. “So it’s true what they say about sleepovers with girls,” he whispered to no one in particular, as if he’d just witnessed a paranormal event. Or the Messiah, walking on water.

Sora locked her eyes with his and snapped her fingers several times in front of his nose. “Hello, Yamato? Earth to Space Man. Care to explain what you’re doing here, just walking into Mimi’s apartment for no reason?”

“Uh, yeah.” Yamato cleared his throat, seeming to recover somewhat. He dared to sneak a glance over Sora’s shoulder, where his confusion only grew as he could see what appeared to be Mimi’s arms smacking a pillow up and down over the figures on the couch. “Uh. Pillow fight?”

Sora just stared at him. _Are you serious?_

The thumping and squealing in the background lessened, until a breathlessly triumphant “I got it! I got it!” arose from the couch. He could see Miyako emerging from the encounter, hair a tangled mess and glasses askew. She waved her fist in the air, clamping the offending cell phone mightily in her grip.

Suspecting that he may have slightly miscalculated the situation, Yamato cleared his throat. “I called. I mean I texted. Then I called. She wasn’t home. I mean she didn’t answer. So I wondered if she’d be home.”

He closed his eyes, and prayed for his soul to spontaneously leave his body.

“Oh. Well that clears things up, then.” Sora drifted away toward the battle scene, the faintest of smirks hanging on her lips. Hikari was sitting up on the couch, one leg still splayed overtop of the back cushion, shouting something about unlady-like behaviour into the kitchen, which was still out of view. Mimi was carefully smoothing the drapes, as if nothing particularly eventful had just taken place. After her careful assessment of the state of her decor, she rose and greeted Yamato from across the living room.

“Good evening, Yamato! Lovely to see you. You’ve just missed all the fun!” she waved and gestured for him to come inside. “We were just finishing up decorating our Valentine’s Day _honmei-choco_ , and things got a little heated.” She laughed delicately, as if at her own absurdly mild translation of what had just occurred. To further his aggravation, she laid a European kiss on both cheeks as he approached. It was something she had started doing a couple of years ago –- suspiciously, only to the boys -- as her travels started to take her to more exotic locales. Yamato was still taken aback each time, which he suspected was almost certainly by design. He stammered again, cursing the heat in his cheeks that returned after it had just started to abate. _Girls!_

“So what brings you to my humble domicile?” Mimi crooned and twirled a strand of hair in her fingers. _Mimi? ‘Domicile’? Who even was this girl anymore, anyway?_

“It’s 11:30 P.M. Surely there’s a reasonable explanation,” Sora’s voice called from the kitchen, words innocuous, but implications like venom.

“I’ve been trying to tell you,” Yamato blurted. “I’ve been trying to reach you all night.”

“Oh?” Mimi’s face fell slightly, a hint of concern now lacing her voice. “Is there anything wrong?”

The others fell silent as well, listening with interest. Yamato exhaled, finally recovering some mental footing.

“Well, it’s your dad,” he began, leaning on an abandoned chair at the table.

The air chilled in an instant. Mimi clutched her chest, morbidly expectant.

“He’s coming back from New York. He’ll be at Haneda Airport in an hour. He wants you to pick him up.”

There was a single second where the universe digested this piece of banality, and then it erupted at him, all at once.

“ _WHAT_?” shouted Hikari and Miyako in unison from the kitchen, minds seemingly re-aligned after their melee confrontation.

“Oh, thank _God_ ,” Mimi swooned, hand fluttering over her heaving chest. “Daddy’s heart is OK.”

“ _That’s_ the big scary news, that was so important you came all the way out here at midnight? To tell Mimi something her father could have texted her about, two seconds after he touched down?!” Sora was doubled over across the kitchen table, eyeing Yamato as if he were a madman. As time went on longer and longer in this apartment, Yamato was starting to question the same.

“So, Yamato, I have, like, so many questions for you.” Miyako was now casually pouring herself another glass of wine. “For instance … why?”

“Why what?”

“Why _you?_ How did you become the Tachikawa family messenger?”

“Ah, yeah,” Yamato put his hands in his pockets, cool-like. In control. “That’s a bit of a long story.”

“Oh, I can probably guess,” Mimi swished her chiffon dress as she approached the table from behind, plucked a plain cookie from a stack and took a bite. “Mama wasn’t picking up her phone because it’s the docu-soap marathon tonight, I wasn’t picking up because I was busy entertaining my digi-gals,” Mimi threw an affectionate kiss over her shoulder in the direction of the others, who returned the favour. Yamato stood there, alien. “And Daddy doesn’t know any of my friends’ phone numbers except your parents’.” This wasn’t unexpected knowledge; Yamato and Takeru’s parents had been serving as the Chosen Children’s parental and media liaisons for several years. Usually their correspondence was limited to apocalyptic crises in the Digital World, but in the Tachikawa universe, this situation wasn’t too far removed. “I hope he didn’t wake up your dad.” She offered him an apologetic pout.

“I don’t think I’ve seen my dad come home before midnight for the past ten years, so I don’t think he was too bothered by it.”

“He couldn’t have just … taken a taxi? Or the train? Or a bus … ?” Hikari began listing public transportation options until she was cut off by a small shriek.

“ _Ew_! No! My father is very fragile,” said Mimi, with great offense. “He can’t handle all those other people’s coughs and germs and dirty shoes in his face.”

“And your dad lives in Manhattan … ?” Sora interposed quietly. It was treated as a rhetorical question.

“So you have to go pick him up? With what car?” asked Hikari, haphazardly poking at her phone, now retrieved seemingly sans criminal photo evidence.

“Not me, silly.” Everyone took a collective inward sigh of relief to hear that Mimi was still unlicensed to drive. “What your father probably failed to understand is that he needs me to make arrangements with his favourite chauffeur, and to have a few bottles of sparkling water ready for him when he arrives. You know, after a long flight like that. It’s his thing.”

“Yeah. His thing. Makes sense to me,” Yamato frowned, glancing at Sora. She met his eyes, looking similarly dumbfounded, and shrugged.

“How would you like a cookie, Yamato? You should take one for the road, coming all the way out here.” Sora’s hands temporarily hovered over the reject pile, then alighted on a sparsely-iced round and offered it, as one would an olive branch, to the young man. His eyes flicked to the reject pile.

“What, you don’t want to give me one with a mutant glob on it?”

“N-“

“You should look at Miyako’s!” Hikari yelled from in front of the refrigerator, where she was organizing Mimi’s magnets by colour and size. “If you want to be traumatized forever, that is. It’s on the table.”

“You must be Taichi’s sister, you’re so dramatic,” Yamato yelled back sportingly, then gazed over the wreckage of icing and food colouring and other accoutrements. “Uh …” There were a lot of suspicious-looking pieces of baking. “Which one?”

“You’ll know it when you see it.” Sora lowered her voice. “It’s truly godawful.”

Yamato was beginning to roll his eyes when he saw the hideous creation, there, near the corner of the table, abandoned by everyone. And, apparently, abandoned by hope. His mouth exploded in a guffaw before he quickly stifled it with his palm.

It was beyond explanation. It offended every carefully curated aesthetic sensibility he had ever known. He felt disgust, then sympathy for the forlorn object, then anger. It didn’t deserve this. No one deserved this. Somebody needed to do something about it.

He reached for the Cookie That Should Not Have Been, and was immediately intercepted by Sora’s forceful forearm. “I think you better ask for permission from its rightful owner first.”

“It needs to die, Sora. I’m putting it out of its misery.”

“Don’t touch that!” Miyako barked, in the middle of drunk-texting someone from on top of the kitchen counter. “S’for Ken. Wasi-babi.” She held up her hands and wiggled her fingers beside her face, clarifying the nuances of the philosophy. What appeared to be her current understanding of them, anyway.

Yamato felt himself getting carried away, despite his best efforts. “This would hurt him, Miyako.” He narrowed his eyes at her, leaned forward on the table, and lowered his voice to a pointed whisper. “ _Don’t you think he’s suffered enough?_ ” Tonight, despite himself, he was along for the ride.

Just before Miyako was about to dive in right along with him with a scathing reply, Mimi cut the spell short. “Well, I hate to rein in this fun little conversation,” she yawned, side-eyeing the two meaningfully, “but Daddy is coming into Haneda soon and I have some phone calls to make.” She leaned toward the girls in the kitchen. “Are you guys good to head home or do I need to call you a cab, too?”

“When’s last train?”

“Fifteen minutes ago.” Miyako was still visibly rankled, but rapidly composed herself to appease her beloved _Mimi-senpai_.

“Oh crap! I guess we’re staying at a manga café tonight. I hope they still have flat rooms.”

“Or … we could do Free Time at Big Sound Karaoke!” Miyako jumped off the counter and waggled her eyebrows at Hikari, knowing that she was making proposition that the other woman was powerless to refuse.

Yamato rolled his eyes to Hikari’s squeals of delight in the kitchen. He turned toward Sora, who had gotten the hint and was packing up the disaster on the table, collecting each girl’s handiwork into individual containers. “You need a ride?”

“Well, isn’t it fortunate that you stopped by?” Sora replied with a wry smile. “Why, yes, I do.” Yamato directed his his eyes to Hikari and Miyako, who had joined hands and were rapidly building their marathon song queue. A question. “I hadn’t mentally prepared myself for an all-nighter listening to those two belt out J-pop idol ballads,” Sora explained.

Yamato nodded and smirked. “You say that as if it’s unpleasant.” He grabbed the proffered cookie tin while she gathered the rest of her materials in her arms.

“OK, we’re off, everyone! Thanks for having me, Mimi! This was fun. I hope your curtains are all right.” Polite as ever, the product of a flawless traditional Japanese upbringing.

“Oh, yeah, Sora! You’re welcome any time. I’ll text you tomorrow about that floral café,” responded Mimi, distracted. “OK, guys, I’m leaving in like two minutes but you’re welcome to stay and water my plants,” she called to the straggling two young women in the back. Her tone indicated that her offer was not, in fact, true.

“Yeah, OK, see you Sora!” Hikari swept up her tin and supplies, then bent and grabbed her almost-forgotten beret with a spare couple of fingers. Miyako, seeing her partner clearly fighting a losing battle in figuring out how to get the hat on her head with her arms full of decorating materials, helpfully snatched the headwear from behind and crammed it on top of Hikari's forehead, backwards.

“Thanks for baking the cookies! Now I don’t have to worry about any food poisoning!” Miyako jammed her tin under her armpit. She made to grab the remaining bottles of wine she brought, realized they were all empty, shrugged, and pushed Hikari into the entranceway where Sora and Yamato had been putting on shoes. Forced outside, Sora waved again and hooked her arm around Yamato’s, for old time’s sake. She was a little drunk, after all.

“She can speak for herself. Did you put that thing in her tin?” Yamato asked, leading the way down the apartment passage.

“I was in such a rush, God only knows where it ended up. And ugly decorating isn’t going to kill anyone,” she said, sensible now that she was back into the Real World, and not in the upside-down Girl Universe. She added thoughtfully, “I can’t say the same about whatever the heck Mimi put into the icing. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow, when I’m dead.”

“That thing would kill anyone with functioning eyesight, which is probably how Miyako was able to make it,” Yamato barked a short laugh into the cool night air as they skipped down the apartment building steps.

“Says the King of Artistic Integrity,” Sora teased. Yamato huffed in response. “What happened to your sense of duty to, how did you word it, ‘put it out of its misery’?” They strode across the parking lot and approached his familiar bike.

“Well, Sora, what I’ve learned is that you need to pick your battles. This is somebody else’s fight to win, now. Or, probably, lose.” He handed over his spare helmet and swung his leg over the gleaming metal body, settling atop it lightly.

“How noble of you,” Sora laughed, easing into the old dynamic like a tongue in a well-worn groove. She pressed her cargo between their bodies, adjusting some of the uncomfortable hard angles that jutted into their middles. Then, she allowed a familiar sense of calmness to take her, as she always felt before a motorcycle ride with Yamato. Soon, she’d be weaving among the impossibly intricate tapestry of Tokyo: myriads of cars and stores and people and lives, passing her by, while she sat in suspended animation on the back of the bike. It was a good feeling, the sensation of indifferent surrender, but only because it was temporary.

* * *

Mimi stretched her arms wide in the back of the private car and yawned unreservedly. The rhythmic passing of the streetlights through the car window was making her sleepy, and she felt small and lonely riding in the back without Palmon or another friend to keep her company. She settled lower into the passenger seat, toying with her phone. Her dress had ridden up her thighs with the motion, but she didn’t care. She glanced up at her daddy’s chauffeur, Rahul, big and aloof and foreign in a country like Japan. Mimi liked to think that she had a certain way with people, but it was hard to get a read on him. He never talked to her much, but he had long conversations with Daddy all the time about all sorts of business things she didn’t understand. She was a businessperson too, now, she thought, so she made a promise to herself to force a part in the discussion this time around. She glanced back down at her dress, then back up at Rahul. The four-pack of Perrier rattled on the front passenger seat. He kept his eyes on the road. Sighing, she looked back down at her phone. She left the dress as it was.

There were three unread messages, besides Yamato’s from earlier. One was from Sora, thanking her for the party, which was completely expected. Mimi texted her a sticker of Palmon holding a gigantic heart and moved onto the other messages. They were both from Koushiro. _What does he want at this time of night?_ The boy was becoming a stranger and stranger kid, with his bonkers work schedules. Sometimes he would text everyone at two in the morning and not realize that no one replied because they were all sleeping. “You know, sleep?” Taichi texted back one morning after receiving an increasingly irritated series of messages demanding their status updates on God-knows-what. “The thing that humans do at night-time? Where you shut your eyes and not move for a while?”

Iori had removed himself from the group chat altogether after that incident, stating that if Koushiro had something important to say, he could make a phone call to him directly, at a decent hour. Jou had agreed, but didn’t remove himself from the chat, likely because he didn’t know how. In a unified front, Yamato and Takeru proposed an intervention, which almost instantly fell apart when they tried to formulate a plan to somehow force sanity on a fundamentally incomprehensible mind. Miyako, as Koushiro’s closest Chosen digital operations partner, simply responded, “lol”. The result was that the boy was allowed to continue doing as he wished, which was probably for the best, Mimi had thought. It’s not good to stifle a genius mind like that. Like holding in a sneeze. His skull would probably explode from the pressure, or something.

Mimi opened their chat. The two messages were as follows:

Koushiro: Good evening Mimi. please call me back when you get the chance – 22:46

Koushiro: Hello Mimi, this is Tentomon. Koushiro-han is waiting for your call. – 23:22

_Cripes,_ Mimi thought with irritation. _He’s getting Tentomon in on his harassment too?_ Disgruntled, she started typing up a response.

Mimi: koushirooooo its late ;___;

Mimi: whats the problem and can it please wait until morning and by that i mean 1pm when my hangover is finished

To her chagrin, her phone immediately started ringing. For a split second, she thought about silencing it, then begrudgingly pushed the “answer” button and hoped that the news wouldn’t turn out to be too apocalyptic. She still had to do her face mask tonight, after picking up Daddy, and didn’t think she could fit in an impromptu sudden-death showdown with an evil digimon before bed.

“Koushiro,” Mimi forced her greeting with a smile, and willed her previous impure thoughts away. She was grateful to him for all his efforts, after all. And whenever he called, there was usually a good reason.

“Hi, Mimi, sorry for the late call,” Koushiro replied, with obvious further intent behind his words. He always had some important knowledge bomb to drop, but never let that get in the way of niceties. _Oh, so Tentomon must have tracked down a clock to keep track of time for him now, then?_

“Did Tentomon get you a nice clock?”

There was a pause on the other line. “What?”

“Never mind. Sorry I missed your messages. I was decorating cookies with the girls.”

“Oh. Did you make them?” The tone was pleasant, but there was a hint of apprehension that sent a shot of irritation through her.

“It’s actually none of your business but no, I didn’t bake them. Sora did.” Mimi crossed her legs. She knew where this was going. “I did put something special in the icing, though.”

“’Special’?” It was delicate, like extracting a murder confession from a particularly volatile suspect.

“Yes! A little something special I picked up in my travels in Tijuana. Lovely gentleman I met on a street corner on the way to my hotel. I had gotten a teensy bit lost and wandered into the bad part of town. He invited me into his shop where he sold all sorts of interesting things, military weapons, taxidermized animals, and tons and tons of chemicals. He called them his ‘potions’ -- isn’t that cute? I told him I was looking for something that could get rid of a bad boyfriend, so he sold me this little bottle. I couldn’t read the label very well because it was in Spanish, though. Something like, oh, what was it, ‘ _arsenico’?_ The details aren’t important. Anyway, we had a wonderful time together but _Yamato_ of all people crashed it and now I have to pick up my father from the airport.”

“Mimi,” Koushiro’s voice was audibly struggling to stay steady. “Did you say you put in something called ‘ _arsenico_ ’ into those cookies? Did anybody eat them?”

Mimi inhaled and let out an elongated “ _hmmmmmm”_. She smoothed her dress across her thighs languidly. “Well, I’m not too sure. We were drinking a lot. Especially Miyako. I’m getting a little worried about her, really.”

“ _Mimi, this is serious!_ _Do you know what was in that bottle?!”_

“Honestly, Koushiro, are you having hearing problems? I said it was a good luck potion to fend off any bad men from my precious friends.”

“ _MIMI!”_ Koushiro practically screeched into the phone. She held it a distance from her ear. “How exactly was that ingredient spelled? This is _extremely. Important_.” He stressed the last two words so much that his voice cracked from the strain.

“Oh, good thing I happened to take it with me! Just give me a sec and let me grab it,” Mimi chirped pleasantly while proceeding to do nothing of the sort. “Let me see …” she said, after an appropriate length of time, examining her nails. “It’s spelled, ‘A-R-S-E- …”

Koushiro’s all-consuming panic on the other end was palpable.

“-H-O-L-E’.”

There was about five seconds of silence, after which Koushiro let out a loud sigh of relieved resignation. “Okay, Mimi. I get it. I’m sorry about the Christmas incident. All right? But that stuff was extremely suspicious, you have to admit.”

“Oh, so your English is improving,” Mimi replied, self-satisfied.

“What was in the bottle.” It wasn’t a question. All of his emotional energy had just been completely spent and he was still in recovery mode.

“It was just a bit of rose-water I got as a free sample from one of my vendors, _genius._ Thought I’d liven up the party with a bit of mystery.”

She waited, but an answer simply didn’t arrive. Sensing that something deep within his brain blew a fuse, Mimi politely waited for Koushiro to reboot himself while she re-arranged her hair in her reflection in the window. After a time, it became clear to her that the boy had simply forgotten why he had called in the first place, and needed prompting.

“Anyway, was there any particular _reason_ why I was so lucky to receive your attention this evening?”

Koushiro dodged the flattery. Or it didn’t register. “Oh! Yes.” There was some faint rustling in the background, like he needed to re-arrange his papers in the hopes that his mind would follow suit. “I just- … “ he trailed off, cutting himself off awkwardly. Almost … nervously. Mimi had remembered how he had been that way when they started out as business partners. It was cute, but not at work. As their conversations became more professional, his quirks lessened, and stopped altogether before they parted ways. She chalked it up to her general effect on men.

“Hm?” she prodded, gently. Waited a moment for him to find his footing.

“I wanted to tell you ‘congratulations’,” came the reply, blurted a little rapidly. A pause. “Your website reached one million views.”

Now Mimi had to scramble to find her words. Koushiro wasn’t in charge of her website anymore, and hadn’t been for some time. That meant that he was still keeping track, on his own. She felt a small lump rise in her throat despite herself, and she choked it back down before responding.

“Ah- really? You checked the numbers? You’re sure?”

She could almost see his shy smile on the other end of the line. “I’m sure. I saw it this evening. One million and twenty-one, I think now. You should check when you have time. I just thought you’d like to know.”

Mimi’s heart was dancing and her head felt dizzy. The feeling rose and exploded out of her chest. “Koushiro! I’m so happy! One million! We have to celebrate!” Mimi propelled herself forward and wiggled a Perrier out of the front seat. Cradling the phone in her shoulder, she unscrewed the lid and let the bubbling fizz escape out of the top, as she laughed and cheered. Rahul tore his eyes from the road to look back at the back seat, ensuring that no damage was being done to the leather seats. Seemingly satisfied, he returned his eyes to the road, with a new faint smile on his lips that went unnoticed. Now and again, he looked back at the ecstatic girl in the rear-view mirror. “Koushiro, you have to celebrate, too! We did it!”

“You did it, Mimi,” Koushiro murmured on the other end, from a darkened office nestled within the infinite city starlight of Tokyo. He took a sip from a can of shochu, and raised it high. “Cheers.”

* * *

Hikari stifled a yawn as she gently let herself into the sharehouse that she lived in with three other students on the women’s college campus, carefully turning the doorknob behind her to avoid the audible _click_ that would signal her less-than-responsible time of return. She juggled her items from one arm to the other, quietly cursing the rustle of the large plastic bag holding her supplies. A creak escaped the floorboards as she tip-toed along the narrow hallway to her modest room, her figure throwing shadows in the first rays of morning light that crept through the common area window. _“It’s not that late,”_ she convinced herself. _“I still have time to sleep for a couple of hours before breakfast with Nana.”_ Nana was one of her housemates, who happily shared Hikari’s love of early mornings and breakfast foods. Unfortunately, Nana and Hikari also shared a hatred of calculus, so study time was usually less fruitful when they met as study buddies. But what are friends, if not people with whom you could share both your joy, and your struggles to solve differential equations?

Opening her bedroom door as quietly as the first, she inched herself in, taking care not to bump the plastic bag against the narrow walls and trigger a deafening rustle. Sighing, she lowered the package onto her small desk, and inadvertently nudged her laptop, which still lay half-open from the afternoon before. She had been chatting with Tailmon through a digital gate, as she often did following a lazy jaunt in the Digital World together. It was always hard to see her off, and she felt guilty whenever she had to leave to attend to her busy life. Gatherings with her Chosen friends … even girls-only gatherings … could get a little rowdy, now that they had become adults. _It’s a bit backwards,_ she mused to herself, suddenly full of complex feelings. She thought of Miyako’s wine collection at Mimi’s, and of other parties that had gotten _complicated_ now that their interactions had taken on a more mature tinge. Sometimes it was just easier to socialize with the digital creatures in more sober settings. The more Hikari thought about it, the more guilty she felt. Shaking her head, she reminded herself that Tailmon wouldn’t want her to feel bad for taking alone time with her friends, or for growing up, and doing stupid things that adults do when they reach that age. Sometimes she felt much more mature at eight, and eleven than she ever did now, at twenty-two. Her eyes wandered to the sleeping laptop screen, Tailmon’s face still etched there in her memory from yesterday. _“You know, maybe I’ll just take a nap later,”_ Hikari reasoned, and lifted the lid entirely open. _“I’ll bet Tailmon will really like some cookies for breakfast!”_

* * *

“Oh, shit,” Miyako muttered as she rocketed past the door marked “211”. Locking her knees, her backpack sprang upwards and over her head, and landed back down with an audible “oof!” from inside.

“Sorry, Poromon,” she called over her shoulder, doubling back. _Stupid complex! All the doors look the same. This happens every time._

“You do this every time!” came the muffled, indignant reply from her backpack. “Can’t you pay a little more attention to where you’re going?”

“It’s not my fault that Ken lives in an actual, for real North Korean military bunker.” Miyako trotted back to the intended door and rattled off three sharp knocks. She waited, adjusting her glasses. She didn’t know why she always felt nervous out here, waiting for the door to open. _Butterflies, I guess?_ Which was ridiculous, she knew, now that she was engaged and everything. Sort of hard to take that back now. _Still_ … she glanced down the hall, half-checking for a beautiful genius woman to leave her apartment, glide her way elegantly toward where she stood, and knock as she had, beside her, three times. She’d look Miyako up and down, then titter, gorgeously. _Who exactly do you think you are?_

Just as Miyako opened her mouth to reply to the imaginary woman, the door opened to Ken, hair slightly rumpled, disconcerted. Miyako, unused to seeing Ken in any sort of disarray (bi-annual mental breakdowns excepted), stood there for a moment, taken aback.

“Miyako,” Ken managed, glancing at his watch. “You’re … on time,” he finished in mild disbelief.

“Why, were you expecting anything less?” Miyako grinned wryly, as if to stop him from responding with the obvious answer. But she knew he would never say such a thing out loud. Ken was always diplomatic. She tipped her head to the side, shrugging off a shoulder strap. “Uh … can I come in?”

“Y-yeah,” Ken exclaimed, snapping out of his daze. He turned to the side to allow her through. “Sorry. I must have lost track of time. Just trying to finish this paper.” Ken was always finishing all sorts of extra projects for his professors in the Department of Criminal Psychology. They really should pay _him_ for tuition, rather than the other way around, she thought. She also may have vocalized these thoughts, on several occasions. Just for the record. Ken said that they were _duly noted._ She was not expecting any windfalls to come of this.

“Mm.” Miyako took off her boots in his small entrance and slid the other shoulder strap off, cradling the contents, lest they protest once more. “I brought you sustenance. Since I know for a fact that you haven’t fed yourself properly today.” She opened the drawstring and looked upward, flashing him a trademark toothy grin.

“That’s not true,” Ken objected. “I ate …”

A pause. Miyako raised an eyebrow. Grin faded to frown.

“… okay. I guess that was technically yesterday.”

Miyako raised the other eyebrow in feigned shock. She pulled out Poromon, who let out a faint squawk, getting his beak stuck in the opening.

“You … want me to eat Poromon?”

“ _No!_ ” they both cried in unison; Miyako annoyed, Poromon alarmed. She swung the feathery creature away from Ken in mock defense. “You don’t have the refined palate to appreciate Poromon’s delicate _umami_ flavour,” said Miyako, eyes narrowed. She lowered the small digimon to the ground.

“Says the person who I’ve seen happily eat week-old fried chicken and whatever was growing fuzz at the back of Takeru’s fridge.”

“Okay, number one, someone who has never worked at a convenience store would never understand. It’s called, ‘ _minimizing losses_ ’. And second … I admit that that was a rare error in judgment.”

It was Ken’s turn to raise his eyebrows in mock surprise.

“An error I never would have made without that bitch Daisuke egging me on.”

“Now that is something that we can both agree on.”

“How would you know what I taste like?” Poromon chirped up at her, while she dug at the bottom of the bag. “You haven’t taken a bite out of me while I wasn’t looking, have you?”

“Only a nibble,” Miyako replied absent-mindedly, lifting the tin out of the pack. “You taste much better than week-old fried chicken.” She stopped to bring a finger to her chin and look upward in a poor imitation of being in thought. “And yet surprisingly similar.”

The young woman stood up and placed the tin on the small table, ominous, while Poromon voiced his displeasure, bouncing up and down around her legs.

“Speaking of chicken,” Miyako mused, “Where’s Wormmon?”

“Right here,” came the small, crackly voice from further inside the bachelor suite. “And who are you calling ‘chicken’?!”

“Wormmon,” Miyako chided to the unseen digimon, “You’re supposed to be making sure Ken doesn’t die. That includes preventing him from starving,” she grinned devilishly and locked eyes with her fiance, who was leaning against the kitchen counter, arms crossed. He let out a forceful sigh, and dropped his face to his palm. _Here we go,_ he said wordlessly.

“I _did_ tell him to eat! About a hundred times!” the sliding door to the living area shot to the side, revealing Wormmon’s riled-up face. “Didn’t I? Ken? I offered to make you an _onigiri_? Or heat up some soup? Or even mix you some _tamago-kake_ for crying out loud! But no. You just said you would do it later.”

“Hold on, this is sounding awfully domestic. Who’s going to be your wife soon, me or him?”

“Yeah, sorry, Wormmon,” Ken had learned how to handle (or decline to handle, in this case) Miyako’s ever-present goading. Wormmon was still a work in progress. “You were right. I should have taken a break sooner,” Ken held up his hands in apology, hoping to extinguish the lecture before it metamorphosed into a full-blown rant. Seeing the stubborn digimon’s antennae continuing to twitch, he pressed his hands together in a praying gesture. _Please, not right now._

Wormmon softened, with a begrudging look at Miyako’s tin. Ken’s eyes followed suit, and desperately latched on to it, as an avenue to change the subject. “That’s very nice of you to bring me something,” he closed his eyes and smiled warmly at Miyako, who beamed. _The butterflies again!_ “What were you cooking?”

“Oh, we weren’t cooking,” she said, placing her hands on the lid, to Ken’s puzzlement. “We got drunk and made some cookies.” Ken blinked. “Well, Sora made the cookies. They were supposed to be for Valentine’s Day, but that’s not for another two days and I was worried you’d waste away before then.”

Ken failed to conceal an expression that looked like he was trying not to feel condescended to. “I see. So … you brought me Sora’s cookies?”

“I decorated them,” she clarified, offended, lifting the lid off.

“That’s not healthy food!” Wormmon whined, suddenly present at the base of the table.

“It’s better than nothing!” she retorted down over her shoulder, setting the lid to the side. Poromon and Wormmon jumped up to get a better look.

Everyone peered into the tin, eager to see the contents. The digimons’ eyebrows furrowed, while Ken’s face remained unchanged, as placid as a lake. He slightly cocked his head.

“Very Pollock-esque. An interesting approach to baked goods. How refreshing.”

“See when you say things like that, I don’t know if it means you like it or you don’t like it.”

“Miyako? Why did you make the cookies look like they didn’t want to be cookies anymore?” Poromon murmured meekly, staring up at her with confused eyes.

“I said I was drunk!”

“Ken gets sad when he’s drunk, too,” Wormmon reassured her gently, and reached out to pat her hand, prior argument temporarily forgiven.

“ _Wormmon_!”

“Well good thing they’re not for you two then, they’re for Ken! So paws off my _honmei-choco_!”

“You mean _his_ _honmei-choco_?”

“Yes! _His_! Whatever!”

Ken ducked his chin to conceal his reddening face, still growing accustomed to overt displays of affection. “Miyako-“

“What are you blushing for? Are you embarrassed to receive proof of my undying love for you?”

Miyako’s bluntness never failed to throw Ken off his feet. Growing up in a home full of well-meaning but empty platitudes, heartfelt statements like that made his chest feel like it was about to burst. She was reckless, spontaneous, and unabashedly herself. Things he could never dream of being. Being with her made him feel alive. And terrified.

“No! I- it’s- they’re-“

“They taste better than they look,” Poromon called from behind them, and Miyako performed a 180-degree turn and appeared back at the table with frightening speed.

“ _WhatdidItellyouthoseareforKEN!”_ she roared, picking up the pink blinking ball and transporting it to where she dumped her backpack on the ground. Poromon whined and struggled as she stuffed him into the cloth prison. “You stay there until you can behave yourself,” she hissed, tightening the enclosure. She stood back up and strode coolly back to the table. She looked down at Wormmon, who was now cowering pathetically, halfway hanging over the edge. She sighed, and conceded, “Since you’re Ken’s partner, I guess you can have _one_.” The little caterpillar’s antennae perked up at this, and his green face emerged above the table once more to creep his way back over to the sugary mound. Surveying the pieces, he started to dig toward the bottom.

“Hey, I didn’t say you could touch all of them! That’s not very hygienic.”

“Wormmon, what-“

“ _Eeevvviiiiiilllll_.”

There was a beat before either of the two humans opened their mouths to request the green worm to explain himself. By that time, he had surfaced with a dour-looking cookie and a stern expression on his face.

“Wormmon, what the heck are you talking abo-“

Ken stopped dead in his tracks when his eyes came into contact with the Mephistophelean cookie in question.

“Dang, I thought Yamato put that thing in the garbage yesterday,” Miyako laughed lightly.

“Now his text makes much more sense,” Ken breathed.

“Ken?” Wormmon continued to hold it up, but shakily, seemingly unwilling to bear its burden any longer.

“Oh, give me that, you big baby,” Miyako swiped it from his grip, and devoured it right before everyone’s eyes, before they had time to avert their gaze from such a direct display of horror.

“M-Miyako? What did she do? She didn’t eat the evil cookie, did she?” came the high-pitched muffled voice from the backpack.

“Yeah. Don’t worry, evil’s gone,” Miyako boasted triumphantly, and flashed a thumbs up in her partner’s direction, despite Poromon’s definitely-opaque surroundings.

Poromon let out a panicked squawk. Ken and Wormmon stared at her, holding their stomachs.

“What? You guys are so dramatic. It’s just some ugly icing.” She lifted the lid off the table and placed it back on the tin, quickly pecked Ken on the cheek, and shrugged on the Poromon-filled backpack on her way out the door.

“Well, see you later! I gotta meet Koushiro for our team meeting,” she sang, already halfway toward the stairwell as the door closed shut.

There was an otherworldly moment of silence in the Ichijouji apartment.

“Ken?” Wormmon began, voice timid but antennae still standing at full alert at Miyako’s physical assault on his partner a moment earlier. “Why would they have a party to make such strange food?”

“I think,” Ken pondered, cheeks freshly flushed, as he lifted the tin and examined the contents once more, “that we just don’t understand girls.”

* * *


End file.
